November 29, 2012

Today’s post is on one of my favorite Cubist Artists. I have always been in love with Cubism as I am interested in the philosophy of deconstruction. When you take

a whole, and instead of bringing all the parts together, you start to take them apart. and then, what does an object actually look like once you start to take the pieces apart.

I am sure this thought is akin to how to process what happens in all of our lives. It makes much sense to me, maybe its the new train of thought for the day.

The artists definition of Cubism is as follows:

A nonobjective school of painting and sculpture developed in Paris in the early 20th century, characterized by the reduction and fragmentation of natural forms into abstract, often geometric structures

usually rendered as a set of discrete planes.

a style of art that stresses abstract structure at the expense of other pictorial elements especially by displaying several aspects of the same object simultaneously and by fragmenting the form of depicted objects

Czechoslovakian-born artist Jan Matulka is one of the pioneers of early American Modernism. He spent several years working alongside Stuart Davis, developing a new style of Cubism oriented around the distortion of form.

He exhibited in many major museums and galleries, including the Whitney Museum’s first three biennial exhibitions of contemporary American painting. His work was also strongly affected by his encounters with

Surrealism in New York and Paris during the 1930s. Matulka taught at the Art Students League and influenced several important modernists, including David Smith, Dorothy Dehner,

and Irene Rice Pereira.

After 1940, Matulka slipped into obscurity until a major retrospective of his work was mounted at the Whitney Museum in 1979.

November 7, 2012

I’ve written about my friend Jamie Herzlinger’s work many times. We met almost 2 years ago. She was a fan of my blog and she, Erica of Design Blahg and I all went out to dinner, and became friends. At that very first dinner, Jamie told me about a plan she had to bring high end interior design to the internet, in the form of Jamie Shop. Two years later, and Jamie Shop, is a reality. As Jamie envisioned it and laid it out for us at that first dinner (I was still 8 months pregnant) Jamie Shop is an online source for trade only furniture, without the commitment of a decorator. Clients of the shop are considered clients of Jamie’s world wide network of design connections, and she and her team provide design guidance from quote to white glove delivery. This is commitment free design, without hourly fees or contracts, and at prices well below retail. And while it’s not right for every project- some homes and clients do need full scale design services- many people who want to be actively engaged in their home’s design, or don’t have the budget for a high end design all at once, will be able to source the most high end goods while under Jamie’s watchful eye.

After that first dinner Jamie and I became fast friends. She used one of my paintings in a show house, and in turn I’ve written about her many projects over the years. We get together for dinners and lunches whenever she is in town (She splits her time between NY and Arizona.) The first post I ever wrote about Jamie’s brand of minimal, elegant luxury, was met with a strange response: tons of comments, sure, but also a huge number of actual PHONE CALLS about it. Normally, phone calls about posts are nil. Her room was my favorite room in the entire Kips Bay Show house one year. And she even offered to give me a bed for Cookie after another (alas I had no place to put it).

You may have noticed that Jamie has been sponsoring many design blogs over the past few weeks, but Jamie has ALWAYS been very supportive of the blogging community, and honestly, it makes me really happy to see that when a designer – who we all happily write about for free- can benefit from online marketing, that she turns to the design bloggers who have been supportive of her all of these years and sponsors their blogs.

Anyway, congrats to Jamie for realizing this project!

Her work varies with the specific projects and locations, obviously, but its always grounded in simplicity, classicism, and quiet luxury.

Since I’ve written about her so many times, I specifically requested she send me photos we haven’t seen before on this blog, and I really love every photo posted here. So quiet. So calm.

Please check out Jamie Shop for access to high end design at below retail prices.

November 1, 2012

I always wondered what lead adult artists to paint childlike paintings and I got my answer when I stumbled upon the work of Armen Eloyan.

His work is at once, disturbing and dark

then comical and colorful. I always find exploring the pathos that leads to different views in art wonderful!

The world depicted by Armen Eloyan (born in 1966 in Armenia, lives and works in Zurich) in his strikingly gestural and expressive paintings can be anything from brutal to

messy and dark, yet paradoxically they are almost invariably also loaded with an undercurrent of humor.Armen Eloyan’s paintings engage him entirely emotionally, mentally, and physically. Each of Eloyan’s works is a celebration, or more precisely a ritual, that he insists on executing in

the privacy of his studio, depicting images that usually stem from his collective and personal experiences in life. These can be anything from the fairy tales and comic strips he has heard

and seen during his childhood, to Hollywood films and images of celebrities that marked his youth. In this way Eloyan not only faces the challenge to fuse his innate need to paint with a

world of story telling, he also adds to them his own verve and vigor that consistently verge on parody, absurdity, and vanity.

In Armen Eloyan’s impasto paintings, a wonderful pathos, brutality, sensuality, and a sense for the grotesque all coexist in some post-disaster condition. Eloyan creates a mood,

In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this portfolio and its pictures, without the permission of Jamie Herzlinger Interiors constitutes unlawful piracy and theft of the designer's intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the portfolio (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting Jamie Herzlinger Interiors at . Thank you for your support of the designer's rights.